Verified User

Verified User

Try "htop" instead of "top". You can distinguish threads from processes, it works better and is far simpler to use.
A load of 15 means that in the last minute (and 5 and 15 minutes) 14 out of 15 processes/threads have in average been waiting for the CPU to be free instead of using it directly.
An ideal value for the load is less than 1, which means that in average all processes have had access to the CPU and there has been no CPU queue.
Now, if you don't see any process using 100% of the CPU even with htop, and given that linux adds to the load number also all the processes waiting for IO... the conclusion is that, very probably, you have a process using up all the IO resources of your disks or that you have a failing disk controller driver.

Verified User

Try "htop" instead of "top". You can distinguish threads from processes, it works better and is far simpler to use.
A load of 15 means that in the last minute (and 5 and 15 minutes) 14 out of 15 processes/threads have in average been waiting for the CPU to be free instead of using it directly.
An ideal value for the load is less than 1, which means that in average all processes have had access to the CPU and there has been no CPU queue.
Now, if you don't see any process using 100% of the CPU even with htop, and given that linux adds to the load number also all the processes waiting for IO... the conclusion is that, very probably, you have a process using up all the IO resources of your disks or that you have a failing disk controller driver.